EveryBlock Launches Hyperlocal Content Widgets
by Matt McGee on Aug 5, 2010 in Content
This could be a pretty neat addition to your hyperlocal blog … if you live in one of the 16 cities that EveryBlock covers: EveryBlock Widgets. It’s an embeddable piece of code that will auto-display hyperlocal data/content on your blog/site. Here’s how EveryBlock explains the process:
You choose one of 16 EveryBlock cities, type in a location, choose the types of content you’d like to see, and we give you HTML code you can copy and paste into your blog or site template.
You can show news at an exact address, a block-radius around an address, a specific neighborhood, or an entire ZIP code. You can tweak it to show just crime, or just crime and building permits, and so on. You can also choose exactly which media sources you’d like to display.
The widgets are available at www.everyblock.com/widget/, and once you get started, the “builder” tool is pretty simple:
(click for larger version)
The ability to customize the exact size (height and width) means you can put a widget pretty much anywhere you want on your blog.
ChicagoScanner.com is a site that uses the widget right on its home page. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see a widget showing news from a single zip code. My Ballard, one of the popular Seattle hyperlocal sites, has created a page called the Ballard Wire, which looks like this:
(click for larger version)
Seems to me that the only drawback is that EveryBlock only covers 16 cities. My little town isn’t one of them, and wouldn’t even be on the radar. If you’re in the same boat as me, feel free to check out my post from last year, How to Create a Local Newswire for your Blog.
If you’re in one of EveryBlock’s cities, this seems like something worth checking out. Let me know what you think of it and how you’re using it. Comments are open.
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This is definitely something that big media companies should be doing, widgetising all that property/motors/classified content they have so it can be pushed onto other sites and filtered by users so they can embed it. If they want. Cool idea.